Tiny Tales
by LJ9
Summary: A collection of five-sentence fics from prompts on Tumblr. Mostly Mericcup.


**Disclaimer:** I don't own the characters you recognize here; those belong to Cressida Cowell, Dreamworks, and Disney Pixar.

Thanks to everyone on Tumblr who requested these. Most of them are Mericcup, but one is probably the closest to what might really happen if Merida and Hiccup met, and one of them is Astrid and Merida being rad friends.

* * *

Merida/Hiccup: dragon, baby, teething

Even squalling, her skin all blotchy red and her chubby little arms reaching up, begging for some relief, she's the most beautiful thing he's ever made. He hands her the silver dragon, a Zippleback, its two necks arched to form a ring that she immediately starts to chew on, her fists clutching its body, and as the noise dies down Toothless creeps back in and resumes his place on the floor near her cradle. He sweeps his hand lightly through her hair, light brown and curly, though her granddad says it may not stay that way; she looks up at him with watery eyes, gumming all the while. His wife joins him and wraps an arm around his waist, resting her chin on his shoulder, and without looking he knows that her face is proud and tender and protective. Her lips tickle against the skin beneath his ear when she whispers, "It's almost enough to make you want another one," and she laughs quietly when he turns to kiss her and says, "I'm willing to try if you are."

* * *

Merida/Hiccup: terrible twos, swords, child safety locks

"D'you know what _your son_ did today?" Merida demanded the moment Hiccup came in the door. Before he even had time to react she grabbed his wrist and dragged him through the house, into the room where _his son_, currently two years and four months old, waited, looking contrite; clearly his mother had already scolded him, so Hiccup wasn't entirely sure what she wanted him to do. Then he saw the sword, a family heirloom of hers, embedded in the floorboards—he must've found it in the chest in their bedroom and then somehow dropped it from the stairs for it to get stuck like that; it was a miracle that it hadn't hit his sister or their mother or Toothless, and Hiccup sputtered, still at a loss, but also feeling a little proud that his son had managed to get past the child-safety locks at so young an age.

Merida whirled the both of them around and marched him back to the door, opening the door with a grand flourish and ushering him out to the car; it was obviously time for yet another run to the hardware store. "How come we never had this problem with _your daughter_?" he asked from the driver's seat, and she rolled her eyes and slammed the door.

* * *

Astrid and Merida: axe, freedom, boots

The shoes her mother has packed for her are slippers, really, thin-soled and delicately embroidered; they force her to take careful steps and hold her skirt above the mud as her brothers escort her up to the great hall, but they're fine for dancing in, the chieftain's blushing son's hands warm at her waist. But the next morning her hostess takes one look at the shoes and shakes her head before going to the wardrobe and producing a pair of brown boots, warmly lined and wholly functional, and she sits on the floor to shuck her slippers and pull on the boots, sighing as her toes wiggle through the lambswool lining, feeling more herself in footwear she can _move_ in.

She envies Astrid's freedom as they stride through the village: the warrior woman seems to answer to no one save the chieftain himself, and no one tries to stop her as she leads the visiting princess into the woods. Astrid's smile is bright and sharp, her aim as good with an axe as Merida's is with a bow, and they challenge each other to ever harder feats of precision before each trying the other's weapon and each admitting the other's expertise. By the time they return to the great hall for dinner she's resolved that an alliance has been made, with or without the men, and stronger for its basis in shared interests and mutual respect than merely in marriage...though if she's offered a dragon along with the young man, she doesn't think she can say no.

* * *

Merida/Hiccup: legends, Thor, history

They tell each other stories: ones they've made up, sometimes, or ones that concern things yet to be, but more often than not stories of things that have come before, the histories of their homes, the legends of their people. Between the Hooligans and the Highlanders they have heroes and monsters, deities and lovers enough to fill every long winter night with a tale. He learns how her father came to the throne and how he lost his leg, how her mother became a bear and then a woman again; she hears how he met his best friend and changed his entire world; each of them admires the other's triumph and gives thanks for their survival. She talks about brownies and selkies and wisps and he tells her about elves and a whole menagerie of creatures that serve the gods, goats and wolves and ravens and cats. Merida praises Epona, goddess of horses, as Angus thunders through the forest and from Toothless' back Hiccup mutters prayers to Thor, sky god, lightning-wielder and master of storms, and between the two deities their bed is blessed.

* * *

Merida/Hiccup: naked, blushing, self-conscious

His shirt went first, after which he unhooked his metal leg, pulled off his breeches, and slipped into the water, Toothless watching vigilantly until he was certain Hiccup was safely in the pool. The cool of the water was a more than welcome relief from the heat of a blazing midsummer day, especially one when they'd been hard at work, already preparing for the winter to come; though today it was hard to believe that there'd ever be a winter again, not with a sun this hot overhead and the distinct lack of any kind of breeze. With his eyes closed Hiccup didn't notice the figure enter the little valley, nor did Toothless alert him to their visitor, and in fact by the time he opened his eyes to see Merida standing at the water's edge the dragon was slinking away discreetly. Blood suffused Hiccup's face immediately as his hands shot downward to cover himself, vaguely aware that the last time someone had seen him this completely bare had been when he was unconscious and covered in blood, soot, and ash, and at the same time intensely aware that whoever had seen him then had certainly not been the young woman who had recently occupied so many of his thoughts and daydreams. Her face was flushed pink as well, her eyes never straying from his; he wished he could say the same as she pulled both dress and shift over her head in one smooth, unhesitating movement, and stepped forward to join him.

* * *

Merida/Hiccup: scars, kisses, quiet

Toothless ends it before Hiccup even has an opportunity to react, and where there had been a threat there is now none, beyond an arrow he can't dodge lancing across his arm; the wound isn't deep but it's sure to leave a scar, one more for his already impressive collection, a reminder to be quicker and more careful in the future. She'd put up a good fight, this wild Highlander, he thinks, as Toothless makes short work of incinerating the body, the flames that wreathe her flesh mimicking the color of her curls. The string of her bow snaps in the heat and he can't help but admire the way she moved, attacking out of nowhere, not even a snapping twig betraying her presence, though he can't find it in himself to mourn overmuch—she'd been an enemy, after all, an ancient foe of his tribe, but more importantly a danger to the two of them. And now she is not, and Toothless licks blood away from the cut on his arm, the dragon's version of soothing the sting, like a mother's kiss. Out of respect they stay until she's reduced to ash, the only trace of her left a silver medallion that he fishes out of the heap with a stick; the burn of it in his hand, around his neck, feels simultaneously like wound and embrace.

* * *

Merida/Hiccup: tattoo, braids, warriors

She threads her fingers through his hair and he can't suppress the moan that tears from his throat at the feeling, leaning back into her touch. She comes from a long and proud line of fighters, and consequently will always be the stronger of the two of them, the braver, the better; in her hands he's weak and willing and utterly unashamed. The tugging on his scalp tells him she's plaiting again—practice, she claims, for when they've a daughter whose hair she'll need to tame, and talk of their future together, of their issue to come, thrills him. When he can no longer bear it he twists beneath her hands, catches her round the waist, pulls her atop him as he falls back onto the bed. She grins, tender and not a little triumphant, and her lips brand her name across his skin.

* * *

Merida/Hiccup: no prompt, just a random surprise one

She drops her head onto the open textbook, curls splaying out to completely obscure equations about redshifts and blueshifts and the Doppler effect, and groans, "This is not why I took this class."

"Why did you, then?" he asks, knowing that most people are in it because it's one of the easier science credits, or because they hear "astronomy" and think "Star Wars" or "Star Trek" or "Doctor Who," or because they get to launch rockets at the end of the semester; only one of those could really apply in this case, and though Merida's already doodled designs for her rocket in her notes, he hopes there's more to one of his favorite classes for her than small explosions.

She stands swiftly and says, "I'll show you," leaving her bedroom without waiting for him to respond and he hurries after her, follows her into the attic, through a small window, and onto the sloped roof, where above the trees the stars glitter. They twinkle because of atmospheric disturbance, he knows, and some of them that look like stars are actually planets or satellites, and he realizes that while he's seeing long-past chemical reactions, storms and collisions and the inexorable pull of gravity, all beautiful in its own way, she's seeing something else equally beautiful: a dance, a story, a possibility for adventure.

He steals a glance at her face tilted up to the night sky, feels the tug of her luring him into orbit; but at the touch of her hand on his he thinks that just maybe they're a binary star, orbiting each other.


End file.
